External HDD enclosures & Large RAID setups...

neutralizer · 3rd November 2009, 12:36 PM

What are peoples thoughts on external enclosures? Are they reliable and fast these days?

I'm contemplating replacing some of my internal HDD's (probably with Spinpoint F3's) but it struck me that it might be worth investigating external enclosures...

Can you get ones that will hold more than 1 HDD?
If you can, how can you run them all over just one esata connection? (or do they have 1 esata for each drive?)
Can you power them sufficiently through USB 2.0 or do they need external power?

Here's what I'm hoping to achieve:
1) Fast boot setup.
2) Reasonable storage capacity (2-3TB).

I have 6 internal drive bays that I can use.

Asako · 3rd November 2009, 12:47 PM

I run two externals, and they've been perfectly fine for as long as I've had them. USB and eSATA both work fine (though my desktop can't use eSATA, only my HTPC). You can get multi-drive enclosures, and afaik they do use the one port eg; http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?...ducts_id=11912 though with USB3 rolling out now, hopefully we'll see some of those enclosures with speeds higher than HDDs can sustain but without the pita of eSATA/AHCI.

From personal experience, I'd just note that you should get a horizontal or box type enclosure (as above) not a vertical single drive enclosure, as they can tip over, particularly if you have cats or such. >.<

For eSATA etc they have to use a power brick. Only 2.5" USB drives can run off USB power.

terrastrife · 3rd November 2009, 12:54 PM

do you have a reason for needign the drive to be remoovable/portable? if not, stick it where it fits

bahman · 3rd November 2009, 2:11 PM

aren't there some 2.5" usb+esata external cases which allows you to not use an external power brick if you connect the drive via esata and then use the usb as the power source?

neutralizer · 3rd November 2009, 5:50 PM

Yeah got one of those for my laptop, Nexus 3 or something. Been working quite well, but I was thinking of something more industrial for the desktop.

Here's what I'm hoping to achieve:
1) Fast boot setup.
2) Reasonable storage capacity (2-3TB).

I have 6 internal drive bays that I can use.

I'm not a super speed freak, but I'm getting sick of it taking a million years to move large files DVD images and 50GB+ compressed archives.
I'd love to buy a SSD drive for the boot drive but there too expensive, so I'm just going to wait a few years for them to plummet in price.

In the mean time I was thinking that maybe it would be smart to use 2 or 3 drives in RAID 0 or 5 (maybe RAID 10 or 01, not sure about them) for the boot drive and then use either individual disks for storage or a seperate RAID for storage.
I like the idea of the speed and fault tolerance increase with RAID, but I'm not sure if there is much advantage to using striped RAID when your going to load up the disks with a heap of data anyway...

Is there any point RAID'ing 1TB drives for the boot drive, or should I just get some smaller/cheaper/faster ones for the boot drive? (If I actually put a bunch of stuff on the boot drive to make use of the extra space then its just going to slow it down massively anyway isn't it...?)

3rd November 2009, 12:36 PM	#1
neutralizer Member Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Sydney, Northern Beaches Posts: 1,390	External HDD enclosures & Large RAID setups... What are peoples thoughts on external enclosures? Are they reliable and fast these days? I'm contemplating replacing some of my internal HDD's (probably with Spinpoint F3's) but it struck me that it might be worth investigating external enclosures... Can you get ones that will hold more than 1 HDD? If you can, how can you run them all over just one esata connection? (or do they have 1 esata for each drive?) Can you power them sufficiently through USB 2.0 or do they need external power? Here's what I'm hoping to achieve: 1) Fast boot setup. 2) Reasonable storage capacity (2-3TB). I have 6 internal drive bays that I can use. Last edited by neutralizer; 3rd November 2009 at 6:09 PM.

3rd November 2009, 5:50 PM	#5
neutralizer Member Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Sydney, Northern Beaches Posts: 1,390	Yeah got one of those for my laptop, Nexus 3 or something. Been working quite well, but I was thinking of something more industrial for the desktop. Here's what I'm hoping to achieve: 1) Fast boot setup. 2) Reasonable storage capacity (2-3TB). I have 6 internal drive bays that I can use. I'm not a super speed freak, but I'm getting sick of it taking a million years to move large files DVD images and 50GB+ compressed archives. I'd love to buy a SSD drive for the boot drive but there too expensive, so I'm just going to wait a few years for them to plummet in price. In the mean time I was thinking that maybe it would be smart to use 2 or 3 drives in RAID 0 or 5 (maybe RAID 10 or 01, not sure about them) for the boot drive and then use either individual disks for storage or a seperate RAID for storage. I like the idea of the speed and fault tolerance increase with RAID, but I'm not sure if there is much advantage to using striped RAID when your going to load up the disks with a heap of data anyway... Is there any point RAID'ing 1TB drives for the boot drive, or should I just get some smaller/cheaper/faster ones for the boot drive? (If I actually put a bunch of stuff on the boot drive to make use of the extra space then its just going to slow it down massively anyway isn't it...?) Last edited by neutralizer; 3rd November 2009 at 6:08 PM.

3rd November 2009, 12:47 PM	#2
Asako Member Join Date: Jun 2008 Posts: 972	I run two externals, and they've been perfectly fine for as long as I've had them. USB and eSATA both work fine (though my desktop can't use eSATA, only my HTPC). You can get multi-drive enclosures, and afaik they do use the one port eg; http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?...ducts_id=11912 though with USB3 rolling out now, hopefully we'll see some of those enclosures with speeds higher than HDDs can sustain but without the pita of eSATA/AHCI. From personal experience, I'd just note that you should get a horizontal or box type enclosure (as above) not a vertical single drive enclosure, as they can tip over, particularly if you have cats or such. >.< For eSATA etc they have to use a power brick. Only 2.5" USB drives can run off USB power.

3rd November 2009, 12:54 PM	#3
terrastrife Member Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: ADL/SA The Monopoly State Posts: 15,958	do you have a reason for needign the drive to be remoovable/portable? if not, stick it where it fits

3rd November 2009, 2:11 PM	#4
bahman Member Join Date: May 2005 Posts: 55	aren't there some 2.5" usb+esata external cases which allows you to not use an external power brick if you connect the drive via esata and then use the usb as the power source?